DER EL-BAHRI, AND SOME INCIDENTS WHICH TOOK PLACE DURING MY STAY THERE
FROM 1905 and onwards I spent five long seasons in Upper Egypt. I was engaged during a part of that time in reproducing a series of eighteenth dynasty bas-reliefs for four different museums. By the courtesy of the Antiquities Department I was allowed the use of the hut built by the Egyptian Exploration Fund, when, under the direction of Professor Naville, the excavations of the Mentuhoteb temple at Thebes were begun. I joined the camp during the last season of its work there. I spent a delightful winter in the companionship of four enthusiastic excavators. The exciting finds while Professor Currelly was in charge of the camp, as well as the epoch-making discovery of the tomb of Queen Tyi in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, all tend to make the winter of 1905–1906 a memorable one in the annals of Egyptian research. It was an exciting time; but as these events, as well as my own work for the museums, has been given in detail in Below the Cataracts, I propose now to recount some of the incidents which occurred since the Egyptian Exploration Fund broke up their camp to carry on their work at Abydos.
The reproduction of the bas-reliefs in the Hatshepsu179 temple, which I originally undertook rather as an experiment, brought me numerous commissions from various museums. The work was interesting as well as lucrative; but after some months of it I yearned to get back to my water-colour drawings. I therefore engaged an artist in Paris to come out the following season to assist me. We then had the hut to ourselves, and we turned the antiquities store-room into a studio for such work as we had not to do in the temple itself.
We led the ‘simple life’ here with a vengeance. We slept under the canopy of the starlit heavens; we fed on what our Arab cook could find in the village between us and the cultivated land, supplemented with preserves I had sent out from England; we rose with the sun and retired not very long after it had set. Hatshepsu’s temple rises in terraces a couple of hundred yards from the hut, and the foundations of the newly excavated shrine of Mentuhoteb lie beside it, the former more or less an enlarged copy of its neighbour of twelve centuries earlier date. An amphitheatre of imposing limestone cliffs backs the two ruins and divides us from the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.
The great Theban necropolis spreads over the desert between us and the cultivation, and stretches some two miles both to the north and to the south of our hut, the vast temple of Medinet Habu being at the southern extremity and the road to the Valley of the Kings at its northern end. In these two to three square miles of broken ground, raised above the limits of the Nile’s overflow, can we read most of what is known of the history of Egypt from the Middle Empire up to the Mohammedan180 invasion. Little is known from the decline of the twelfth dynasty until the rise of the New Empire some five-and-thirty centuries past. But the story of the renaissance during the eighteenth dynasty, the conquests of the second and the third Rameses, as well as the gradual decline of the empire until the foreign domination, can be read here by the Egyptologist as in an open book. Of the rule of the Tanites, of the Libyans, and of the Ethiopians, we find fewer indications. Some remains remind us of the second renaissance during the late Egyptian period, and we are also reminded of Cambyses and the Persian domination, when we behold the overturned colossal image of Rameses. A beautiful little temple of Nektanebos carries us forward to when the Egyptians came by their own again.
The Ptolemaic fa?ade at Medinet Habu, the beautiful little shrine at Der el-Medineh, and the inner sanctuary of Hatshepsu’s temple remain as examples of the work done under the Ptolemies. If we go a mile beyond Medinet Habu we find a little temple of Isis erected by Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, and bearing the inscriptions of Vespasian, Domitian, and Otho.
The early Christians have left their mark in Hatshepsu’s shrine to Ammon Ra; unfortunately little of their constructive work is seen, but a great many obliterations of beautiful eighteenth dynasty bas-reliefs make us regret their pious zeal. Until recently a partly ruined Christian church stood in the centre of the second court of the Rameses III. temple at Medinet Habu. Misplaced zeal on the part of Egyptologists caused this primitive place of Christian worship to be181 cleared away so as not to obstruct the view of the earlier building. A broader view of arch?ology might have spared such an interesting structure.
To settle down to a stay of seven consecutive months in an arid waste, surrounded by tombs and the crumbling remains of a bygone age, might strike the man in the street as holding out a gloomy prospect. The idea that I had not been particularly favoured never entered my head till, after four or five months passed here, I received a visit from a relative. This lady had picked her way on a donkey, through a mile or more of pit tombs, rock tombs and broken mausoleums, on a hot and dusty day, before she reached my hut. After our greetings she remarked, ‘You must be fed up with this place by now.’ She asked me to come and stay, as her guest, in the huge new hotel which we could see from here outlined against the eastern horizon. That I had become an object of pity instead of one to be envied was a new and strange idea to me. To give up my free life in this fine air, surrounded as I was with an infinity of things which filled me with interest, and my only regret being that the days were far too short—to give this up to loaf about the hotel at Luxor amidst a crowd of people whose one object is to kill time—the very thought of it gave me a shudder. I tried to console my kindly intentioned relative that she would think better of my locality when she had seen the beautiful things Hatshepsu’s temple had in store for her.
The beautiful series of reliefs illustrating the expedition to the Land of Punt, the presentation of Queen Aahmes to Ammon Ra and the divine birth182 of Hatshepsu, all executed during the best period of the eighteenth dynasty, did less to expel the gloomy thoughts of my relation than did the cup of tea which my Arab cook had prepared for her. The frank admission that the chipped and cracked examples of an archaic art did not appeal to her was refreshing, and I began already to have my suspicions as to the genuineness of many exclamations of admiration I had heard.
Early Egyptian art must ever remain as caviare to the masses until they learn that art is not merely a slavish reproduction of some natural objects. They would do well to credit those who have studied it and who assure them that it is in truth a very great art, and that it well repays any intelligent person who approaches it with proper reverence. The absence of perspective and of all foreshortening in these low reliefs shocks the tyro, and he may express himself that the figures must be wrong when an attitude is depicted which it is impossible to hold. The mind, however, soon accepts these conventions and is free to admire the wonderful drawing of the outline, the sense of proportion, and the marvellously suggested modelling in a relief that seldom surpasses the eighth of an inch in thickness. Apart from the purely ?sthetic pleasure the eighteenth dynasty work gives us, it is a delight to be carried back to a remote age and to see depicted not only the gods and the kings, but the everyday life, with its joys and its sorrows, of a people who flourished more than three millenniums ago.
The past may seem too remote to awaken much sympathy in many who are always surrounded by the comforts of the present day. But if we enter into the183 life of the fellaheen who dwell in the villages where desert and cultivation meet, we find much in common between the early Egyptians and this country-folk.
Some actually live in the tombs, using the forecourts for their beasts. Where exceptionally interesting wall inscriptions exist in the ancient sepulchres, the Antiquities Department has stepped in and protected them from the risk of being damaged. The evicted tenants then build their homes nearer the cultivation. The one I give as an illustration to this chapter is a fair sample of a modern Theban homestead. The dress of the people has altered slightly from that of their remote ancestors, and the camel was presumably non-existent in pharaonic times; but little else has been changed. The rude bins made of dried mud are of early Egyptian rather than of Saracenic design. The stone in the right-hand corner with which the fellaha grinds the corn, finds its prototype on the walls of many an adjacent tomb.
The farming operations have little changed during this great lapse of time. The scenes depicted on the walls of the tomb of Nakht: the men reaping with sickles, the women gleaning; others packing the ears of corn or measuring the garnered grain—all this can be seen now, in any of these villages, and it is done in the same simple and primitive manner. The types of the labouring people are less changed than their simple garments. The women plucking durra or winnowing the corn in Nakht’s sepulchre might have been drawn from any of the women we now see carrying their pitchers of water from the wells. All are now followers184 of the Prophet save a few Coptic Christians; the worship of Isis gave way to that of the risen Christ, and the crescent has since replaced the cross. But many a superstition has survived these changes. The mental characteristics of the Upper Egyptian differ very much from those of the true bred Arab; it is therefore rational to believe that these have been transmitted as well as the cast of the features.
Some allowance must be made for the inhabitants of Gurna, the long straggling village at the base of the necropolis. Year after year tourists pass by its hovels, and from a coin thrown now and again to the children, a breed of beggars is replacing an otherwise hard-working people. The demand for ‘antikas’ has caused a supply of false ones, or tempted the men to steal from the temples whenever a favourable chance presents itself. Many have lost the habit of work in consequence of these evil influences; thus, on the whole, the Gurna peasants compare badly with those of less frequented villages.
185 With the exception of a few friends who were connected with the excavations, or an occasional visit from acquaintances who were spending a season in Upper Egypt, I saw few human beings beside the Gurna peasants. I endeavoured to see the best side of their natures, and to make allowances for the centuries of bad government under which they have existed. I found them not quite so bad as they are painted. Their ingratitude, of which I had heard a good deal, can be explained in two ways; firstly, hospitality is a duty of the Mohammedan religion, and hospitality of a kind is expected and taken for granted. We are seldom grateful for what we consider our due. Secondly, many favours conferred by the foreigner are little more than common humanity demands, and he is liable to place too high an estimate on what he may have done. Where too much gratitude was not expected for some service performed, I generally found that the fellah could be as grateful as the peasant nearer home.
Their greed for money is a characteristic which the tourist cannot fail to perceive; but the tourist seldom meets any of the fellaheen save those who live near the frequented ‘sights.’ The annual influx of sightseers has become as a crop, to these peasants, from which a harvest should be gathered. In their eyes the Sauwah?n are all millionaires, and, according to the oriental mind, the rich man should pay out of the abundance of his riches, and not necessarily in proportion to the services rendered. Our medi?val ‘largess’ was taken in that light by our forebears, and corresponds very much to the fellaheen’s notion of baksheesh. This is not expected of those who live and work amongst them, for ‘How can a man be rich if he works daily with his hands?’ Baksheesh from such as myself would be expected not as largess, but more as a gratuity after a certain period of service.
I remember a man asking where the Beled es-Sauwah?n was, that is, the ‘Land of the Foreigners.’ On being told that the English, the French and Germans, who were all Sauwah?n, had each a separate country, my questioner retorted, ‘But surely you are not one of them?’ I told him that as I was an186 Englishman, I was of course one of them, and I, in my turn asking him a few questions, managed to arrive at his views on the subject. He was aware that there existed beyond the seas a land of the Ingleesi, also one of the Fransowi, and one of the Nemsawi; but besides these there was a land of the Sauwah?n, a rich people who apparently did no work, and annually migrated to the south to visit the temples and tombs of the ancient Egyptians for some obscure purpose which he had not quite fathomed.
They are superstitious to a greater degree than the pure Arab, who, to my thinking, is less so than most other illiterate people, and it would be an interesting study to sift the superstitions which date back to the Pantheism of the early Egyptians from those which have been imported since the Mohammedan invasion.
They seem to credit every foreigner who lives amongst them with a certain amount of medical knowledge, and when their own treatment will have failed in its object, any European living amongst them may expect a visit from the sufferer. A supply of Epsom salts and a solution of boracic acid, left in my hut by the last tenants, did duty for most internal and external complaints which were brought to me during my first season; and these remedies, largely assisted by the antiseptic air of the desert, soon established my reputation as a hakeem. The remedies being gratis, and a bottle thrown in, it is possible that the bottle may have attracted some of my patients. There is a well-appointed hospital at Luxor to which I vainly tried to persuade many to apply. Wild stories of imaginary horrors187 practised there, and the usual fear that some means would be used to extract money from them, prevents many an excellent hospital from being the blessing it should be.
A painful case that was brought to my notice decided me to augment not only my medical stores, but also to gain some elementary knowledge as to first-aid treatment. In early November scorpions are still active, and are not hibernating, as they do while the tourist’s season is on, and only those who live here in the hot season have any idea what a pest scorpions can be. The case in point was that of a little girl who had been stung, and the father hurried round to my hut to ask me for a remedy. The only treatment I had then heard of was to take alcohol in sufficient quantities to counteract the poison of the scorpion. As the child was only eleven years old, I put more water than whisky in the bottle, and told the man to give his girl a teaspoonful about every half-hour, and to be careful to keep the wound clean. I saw the man the next day, and he told me that the child was well again; how far he had applied the whisky solution I could not tell. A suspicion crossed my mind that he had probably drunk the whisky, and possibly rubbed the wound with the empty bottle. The child, however, being well, I thought no more about it till I again met the man, a week or so later. I playfully remarked that I hoped no more whisky might be required for scorpion stings, and received the startling answer that the child was dead. The man took his loss in the resigned fatalistic manner of most Mohammedans. ‘It was the will of Allah, and we must accept that as all for the best.’
188 I sent a letter the next day to the dispensary which is attached to the American mission, and begged the man in charge of it to supply me with any known remedies for the sting of the scorpion, and also to kindly write out how the remedies should be applied. My servant brought back two preparations of ammonia, some lint, and detailed instructions how to use them. There was no mention of alcohol, so I trusted that my suspicions as to who had swallowed my whisky had been well founded.
As we got into December, we heard and saw little of scorpions, and, during the season of hibernation, I forgot about these creatures as well as about the remedies, till a very rude reminder of their existence brought one and the other back to me.
While lifting up some stones in the Ramesseum so as to arrange a level place to stand my sketching-stool, I put my hand inadvertently on a sleeping scorpion. He was soon awake, and the sting I got in my hand caused the most acute physical pain I can ever remember. I was a mile away from my hut and the remedies; but remembering the first instructions, I endeavoured to tie my handkerchief tightly round my wrist, so as to stop the poison, which I felt shooting up my arm. I could not manage this with one hand, and had to call in the assistance of two American ladies who happened to be viewing the temple. When one kindly tied the handkerchief as tight as I could stand, the shooting pains up my arm lessened, and the poison then worked its way to my finger-tips. My good Samaritan tried to induce me to mount her ass and ride into Luxor to see a189 doctor. This and the crossing of the Nile would have taken me over an hour, and the pain in my finger-tips became too acute to make an hour of it even thinkable. Besides which, I was keen on trying my new remedies.
The treatment which my missionary friend had written out worked very well; the application of ammonia to the wound, and the drops taken internally, soon had some effect, and Ebers’s Bride of the Nile, which I was reading, and on which I tried hard to concentrate my thoughts, probably did some good also. A native acquaintance called to suggest a cure. I was to repeat certain words accompanied by some signs, and I know not what else, for I was not in the mood to take his instructions in. Not wishing, however, to throw cold water on his good intentions, I told him that, good as his remedy might be, I was afraid that it might act counter to the one I was trying. The cabalistic words and signs might not agree with the ammonia treatment prescribed by one who had no belief in these words, and my friend admitted that he had never thought of that. I also pretended to fall asleep, and succeeded thereby in ridding myself of my well-intentioned visitor.
A peculiar stiffness hung about my finger-joints for nearly a week and then left me; it was my left hand, so it did not interfere with my work. One detail I had omitted may be well to mention, in case a reader be similarly circumstanced, and that is, when using some sharp instrument to open the puncture so as to squeeze out as much poison as possible, be sure to disinfect190 this instrument properly. I imagined a good wipe of the hypodermic syringe I used for the purpose would be a sufficient precaution; but a sore place which took some time to heal has taught me in future either to dip the instrument into carbolic acid, or, failing that, to heat it in the flame of a candle before trying any surgical operations with it.
No patients from scorpion stings applied to me again, for the death of the poor little girl may have been put to my charge. As an eye doctor I was in great request. Dirt being the chief cause of the complaints, a wash with the boracic solution did no harm, and generally did some good. Some brought blind people to my hut—rather a lot to expect from a little boracic acid! Some cases were probably only cataract, and quite curable; but say what I would, I could not persuade these people to go to the Luxor hospital.
Since then I hear that a member of the Khedivial family has devoted a large sum of money to send properly equipped medical men to the villages to see how far they can cope with the various eye maladies. A wiser and better charity it is hard to conceive. Had my patients dwelt in the towns or on the cultivated land, my cures might have been few and far between. The pure desert air had much to do with my healings.
I mentioned the case of the little girl who had died to a medical friend who happened to be spending the season at Luxor. In his opinion the poison from the scorpion was not the cause of the death; but when picking at the little wound some poisonous matter must have got in and caused blood-poisoning.
191 I went out the next season more fully provided with medical stores, and our good doctor in Haslemere had given me some hints as to bandaging a wound and applying first-aid treatment. I had not long to wait before putting my freshly acquired knowledge to a test. One of the guards at the Hatshepsu temple trod with his naked foot on a jagged bottle end which some careless picnickers had left there. It was a ghastly wound, and though I told the man I would pay for a donkey to take him to Luxor, and would see that he lost no wages while he might be laid up, he would not go, and preferred taking the risk of losing his foot. As all persuasion failed, I set to work to do my best. I washed his foot and bandaged it with the antiseptic material I had, and sent him home with a broomstick for a crutch. He and the broomstick appeared early next morning to have the wound dressed, and his visits were repeated twice daily for the best part of a week. The rapidity with which that foot healed up made me doubt as to whether I had not missed my vocation. No London surgeon could have effected a cure as rapidly with all his experience and his up-to-date appliances. But lest I should become too conceited, I reflected that the London surgeon had neither the desert air to operate in, nor had he as abstemious patients as mine was. No strong drinks had ever heated his blood, and his simple fare was sufficient for the easy work he had to do, but not enough to produce the acids of the often overfed Britisher.
Now this man was grateful for the trouble I had taken, and I’ll be bound to say, more so than many192 London hospital patients who take all that is gratuitously done for them as a matter of course.
He tried to show his gratitude one day in a manner I had to decline. I found him shaving the head of his fellow-guard with pieces of broken glass. I watched him for some time performing this dry shave: he would break a piece off a bottle and then jag the sharp edge over his mate’s skull. When the edge was blunted, he would break off another piece of glass and continue the operation, till finally the head appeared as free of hair as a billiard ball. It took the best part of an afternoon to complete the job to his satisfaction. It was past the season when visitors to the temple might be expected, and time was therefore of no object. Seeing that my hair wanted cutting badly, my late patient seriously offered to shave my head in like manner.
I dislike long hair, especially in hot weather, but I thought I might dislike the broken glass still more. Neither I nor my assistant from Paris wished to lose a whole day by going to Luxor to visit the hairdresser, and the latter decided that he would let our cook try his hand on his head. Our cook appeared to be as expert a barber as the temple guard, and time being rather more valuable to him, he cleared the hair off my companion’s head very quickly.
Even this did not encourage me to submit to the operation, and I reflected that as my time was more valuable than that of a native Luxor barber, I would get a barber from thence to come to me. I also prefer these artists in hair to use my own brushes to any they may themselves possess. The brushes were, however, of little use, for there was nothing to brush for a fortnight after the Luxor hairdresser’s visit.
193 I have no picture of the broken bottle school of barber; but I painted one of the craft, at a recent date, plying his trade in a street in Cairo. He had a pair of scissors to take off the main crop, and a dry shave (where no blood was spilt) followed with a razor. He got through his job very much quicker than the amateurs at Der el-Bahri, but he did not do it as cleanly. While I painted my street corner, I noticed several heads the worse for the razor, and though some talk as to the charge for the operation usually preceded it, there were seldom any complaints about the cuts in the scalps.